


Lemon Bars and Monopoly

by Dragonsquill (dragonsquill)



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, Prompt Response
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-27
Updated: 2015-08-23
Packaged: 2018-04-11 10:48:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4432667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragonsquill/pseuds/Dragonsquill
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It wasn’t easy, leaving everything they knew behind.</p><p>They’d done it, though, the group of them: Bofur, his cousin Bifur, his brother Bombur and sister-in-law Hetta, and the Bomburlings (as he called their little brood).  They’d abandoned the mines of their childhood, piled their belongings in a huge old van they bought on the cheap (so cheap it was a good thing they were all mechanically inclined), and joined a ragtag caravan on its way to restore a ghost town and bring it back to life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Lemon Bars

**Author's Note:**

> These two alphabet prompts take place in the same universe; Lemon Bars is a Bofur story and Monopoly is a Ri brothers story.

It wasn’t easy, leaving everything they knew behind.

They’d done it, though, the group of them: Bofur, his cousin Bifur, his brother Bombur and sister-in-law Hetta, and the Bomburlings (as he called their little brood). They’d abandoned the mines of their childhood, piled their belongings in a huge old van they bought on the cheap (so cheap it was a good thing they were all mechanically inclined), and joined a ragtag caravan on its way to restore a ghost town and bring it back to life.

“What will we even _do_ in Erebor?” Bombur asked quietly as they loaded the last child in the van, Hetta’s calm voice having them sound off in the background. “We’re miners, Bofur.”

Bofur grinned. “Anything we want,” he said, “for the first time in our lives.”

Born in the mines meant dying in the mines, and they were having none of it. 

It was an odd collection following Prince Thorin, running from the wealthiest to the poorest, some drawn by a sense of adventure, some the promise of coin. There was even a Hobbit along, apparently fed up with his comfortable, wealthy life back home and in need of weeks sleeping in cars and a year or two of hard labor to follow. For the family Ur, following the Durin family was all about new choices, a chance to use skills other than strong hands and aching backs. 

When they first arrived, it was indeed those hands and backs that came in handy. The mountain was crumbling in places, and it was the Urs - two miners and a pair of architects - who led the efforts to select the safest portion of the mountain and direct the others in how to restore it. It felt strange to Bofur, his hands like sandpaper and rock, working blisters into the delicate fingers of their Hobbit, the scholarly hands of Ori, even the somewhat calloused hands of their young warriors in training, Fili and Kíli, whose hands knew weapons but not pickaxes and brushes. Strange, but not so much that he didn’t do it.

If he wanted to leave his old life behind, he had to help create a world to do it in.

One of the first areas they restored was the old kitchens, used for creating meals for two hundred dwarves at a time, back in the day. It was expensive, of course, and Bofur marveled at the money trickling from the Durins and the Oin brothers, even as he installed modern ovens and watched Bifur tinker them to the height of efficiency.

They finished late in the night, sweaty and tired, Bombur more asleep on his feet than anything else, Hetta long abed with their children. Bofur, however, could never go straight to bed after work, and he looked over their accomplishment and the supplies their Hobbit had run for (a seven hour drive to the nearest town under Gloin’s watchful eye), and announced, “We need to test it.”

“You do that, brother,” Bombur muttered, patting his shoulder and shuffling for the door. “Those of us with some shred of sanity left are going to get some sleep.”

Bifur muttered agreement in the way he did, expressing himself around the aphasia from an old mining accident (one of the reasons they ran for this new life - seeing Bifur lying there, week after week, talk of brain damage, thoughts of Bofur’s babies growing up to this work that claimed lives monthly), and followed Bombur out of the newly functional kitchen.

Bofur didn’t mind a bit.

A dwarf needed to be alone with his kitchen from time to time. 

He’d always loved cooking - well, baking - the scientific exactness of it, the delicate touches of pastry, the joy brought on by a cake or tart for special occasions. He wasn’t assigned to the miners’ kitchens officially back home, but he’d been given more than his share of time in there after hours, fixing treats to bring smiles to exhausted, dust covered faces.

No reason it couldn’t work here just as well. He’d think of it as a bit of an apology for all those blisters.

Bofur rolled up his sleeves, looked over the Hobbit’s purchases, and grabbed the fine selection of hand-me-down pots and pans the various members of Thorin’s company had brought along and donated upon arrival. 

When the Company wandered in, one by one, in search of yet another bowl of instant-something, they found instead a neat and humongous stack of lemon bars. 

“M’mother’s specialty,” Bofur announced proudly, “and I’ve tea to go with and then you can eat your instant goop as well, if ye like.”

Murmurs of appreciation, eyes closed in bliss, even a moan or two-

Mama would be proud.

“Your tea is atrocious,” proper shopkeep Dori told him, but before Bofur’s braids could droop sadly, and with a sharp elbow from a Ri brother on each of Dori’s sides (both with their mouths too full to say anything), Dori hurriedly added, “but the squares and delicious. ….Can you bake anything else?”

Bofur shrugged. “I’ll figure out how to bake anything you please. It’s all just math, really.”

Dori exchanged a look, for some mysterious reason, with Bilbo Baggins, sole Hobbit.

“Bofur,” Bilbo said, his sharp eyes studying him, “how would you like to go into business?”

Bofur’s eyebrows lifted with interest. “Aye?”

“A cafe,” Dori expanded, “tea and coffee by me, savories by Bilbo here, baked goods by you.” He tapped a finger beside the perfect squares. “It’ll be good for the tourists we get first, but then useful to the people who stay as well.”

Bofur stared a moment, something curling excitedly in his chest. “ _Cook_ for a living?”

“Well,” Bilbo and Dori exchanged another look, “yes.”

Bofur looked down at his hands, gnarled and rough, sandpaper and rock, then let his eyes wander to his wrists, the thick hair there still dusted with flour and a hint of sugar.

He smiled.

“Anything we want,” he said to a sleepy-eyed Bomburling, who nodded wisely as she reached for her third pastry, “for the first time in our lives.”

He turned his grin on Bilbo and Dori, and held out a hand. “I accept,” he said. 

Dori’s hand was fingertip callouses and rough chemical skin, and Bilbo’s were fresh blisters over wealthy softness, valiantly working toward callouses.

It would take time, but Bofur was willing to do anything it took to make this new dream come true.


	2. Monopoly

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> One of the first truths recognized by the entire Company of Thorin Oakenshield was that Nori, of the Ri brothers, cheated at cards. 
> 
> And chess.
> 
> And possibly hopscotch, had anyone thought to suggest it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story exists in the same modern AU as "Lemon Bars."

M – Monopoly – Family

 

One of the first truths recognized by the entire Company of Thorin Oakenshield was that Nori, of the Ri brothers, cheated at cards. 

And chess.

And possibly hopscotch, had anyone thought to suggest it.

Only he did it in such a charming, foxy, sharp-eyed way that somehow the others in the caravan found themselves not only forgiving him, but learning to think of finding Nori out as just another aspect of any game in which he took part. “Catch Nori” was a sort of appended rule to any and all forms of entertainment on the road.

The Ri brothers travelled in an ancient and meticulously preserved van painted a deep bruise-purple. It had wooden side panels and seats that had been carefully reupholstered in a soft but durable fabric that fascinated a few of the engineers in the caravan.

“It’s a bit like metal,” Balin mused, fingers tracing along it, “as tough as it is.”

But Dori, the eldest of the Ri brothers, kept his silence as to exactly what the material was, only saying that it was an old family weave. 

If the Ris weren’t forthcoming about their hidden talents, they were about something else: the Ris had an entire seat carefully stacked with a wide selection of board games.

There were the classics, of course, their boxes taped at the corners and the covers battered: chess, checkers, Cluedo, Othello, Risk. But they had new games as well, sweeping sagas with complex rules that required strategy; trivia games of varying levels; games where everyone worked together for a common goal and won or lost together. Every night, when the ramshackle collection of cars, vans, and motorcycles were settled in for the night, the Ris would turn on a light over their van, pop out a table, and invite one or two people for a game.

Though he never played, Thorin seemed to approve of the gaming, even if he usually had strong opinions about everyone making themselves useful. One by one, the members of his Company came to know each other, not via shared chores, but through the nostalgic memory of childhood games.

The oldest and most delicate game in the family’s collection was a Monopoly set that, according to their little historian Ori, originated in the late 1940’s. It had belonged to the brothers’ parents, and was both jealousy guarded and joyfully shared with new friends as the days turned into weeks. 

It was also the game that Nori never, ever lost.

And no one could figure out how he did it.

When playing Monopoly with the Ri brothers, there were a few extra rules that must be accepted. Dori was always, without fail, the top hat. This law was so well laid down that the top hat was presented to him at each game without comment by Nori or Ori. 

It would be Nori or Ori because the second rule was that the game, yellowed and delicate, taped along the seams, was only to be pulled from its crumbling box by one of the two younger Ris. While they were setting up (often with a fair amount of soft grumbling at each other), Dori would make tea as his top hat majestically held his place at GO. This tea was placed on a separate table, to protect the board from spills.

Rule number three stated that Nori was not, under any circumstances, allowed to control the bank.

Exactly why this rule was so necessary remained something of a mystery – at least until everyone had played a round with him and realized that, even without controlling the bank, Nori

Never

Lost.

“How do you _cheat_ at Monopoly?!” Kíli snarled after his second game – the only one brave enough to play a full round twice. He was not, as it turned out, a particularly graceful loser.

His brother patted his hand distractedly, too involved in the serious decision of whether he wanted to be a shoe or a ship to provide the appropriate amount of support in this trying time. 

“I am blessed,” Nori purred as he counted his colorful fake money, “with an overabundance of luck.”

“Yeah,” his little brother muttered, “which he obviously stole from me.”

Ori, though a master of trivia games, never did well at all in cards or Monopoly. Cards in general, really, seemed to hate him – whether of the four suits or the chance variety. If anyone was going to be sent to prison six times in one game, it would be Ori.

But Nori’s was not the only personality revealed by the cutthroat _Fast-Dealing Property Trading Game._

A dwarf could learn a great deal about his new companions as houses were built and chances were taken and this or that dwarf was tossed into jail with malicious ceremony. 

Gloin, for example, was an extremely exact and borderline-pedantic banker, his affable smile disappearing the moment the brightly colored papers were under his control. (“I could have warned you,” his young son said pointedly, “if you’d bothered to _ask_ , that you never give Da money. He’s likely to dig a hole and bury it.” This statement drew a very suspicious look indeed from the protective Ris, whose hands hovered over the heirloom as if it was made of the finest crystal. )

His brother Oin took a different tack – he seemed to suffer from regular malfunctions in his hearing aides when someone else asked him for money, often accompanied by a sudden desire for drink or a private trip to water the trees that took long enough his opponents would give up and skip to the next move out of sheer boredom.

The calm and focused Balin, usually the kindest dwarf in the Company, proved to have his own affection for the top hat, and was also the only one who refused to simply accept the Dori Top Hat Rule. He plucked it right out of Nori’s clever fingers when he played, smiled pleasantly at Dori, and placed the hat for himself.

Never before had two such dapper gentlemen politely harangued each other for possession of a single metal top hat. So long did it last that eventually the other members of the party simply abandoned the game, and Ori was later found attempting to stop a world-wide cardboard pandemic with the help of Fíli, Bofur, and Bombur. 

“I grew up with Dori,” he said when questioned about his abandonment of the Monopoly game. “I’m not fool enough to get in between Dori and someone just as opinionated and fussy as he is. That way,” he laid a dramatic glove over his heart, “lies madness.”

Fíli would watch quietly, soaking everything in, before suddenly purchasing half the board in a sort of hostile takeover that made his mother tsk and his uncle look on proudly. If it wasn’t for Nori’s . . . luck . . . he might well have been impossible to beat.

Bofur was Fíli’s opposite, smoking and drinking and humming and chatting and not paying the least bit of attention to his cards. He would inadvertently ruin the strategies of others by buying utterly random properties that had no relation to each other. When someone groaned or growled in his direction, he looked so contrite that even his jolly mustache was a touch sad, until you had to forgive him his sins. Despite this, he played more games than anyone other than the Ris, and cheerfully stuck it through to the end, even if the game had to be continued the next night. 

Bilbo refused to play Monopoly at all, insisting that he didn’t need some board to tell him about free enterprise and the theory that economies should reward wealth creation. This was followed by a history lesson on Ardan economic theory that only Bifur made it all the way through, listening with wide eyes as he nibbled on a carrot. The Hobbits, apparently, believed in a less competitive and more supportive monetary system.

The days were long, the roads rough. Families were tucked in close for 12 hours at a time, and tensions would rise. But in the evenings, as the moon rose and Gloin and Oin built a fire for Bilbo and Bombur to cook over, the youngest members of the caravan would run and play in the grass, and the Ris would put out their lamp, and a game, and invite the various members of this odd band of misfits to join their family for an hour of chatting, competition, and fun.

By the time they reached the mountain, the band of strangers were more like a band of cousins, squabbling and assisting and supporting and teasing and helping and always ready to sit down for a game or three from the Ri’s extensive collection.


End file.
